In excerpts from the impressive hour-long phone call on Saturday, Trump criticized his Republican colleague for refusing to falsely say he won the election in Georgia and repeatedly praised baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there is nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you recalculated,” Trump said in a part of the call. Raffensperger replied, “Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is that the data you have is wrong.”
Elsewhere, Trump said, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
“You should want a precise election. And you’re a Republican,” said Trump at one point.
“We believe we have an accurate election,” said Raffensperger in response, to which Trump replied, “No, it doesn’t. … Not even close. You’re wrong by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
The president also stated during the summons that votes in the state were scanned three times, a claim that Raffensperger rejected, saying: “We have audited this and proved conclusively that they have not been scanned three times.”
The White House declined to comment on CNN.
CNN contacted Raffensperger.
Officials at Raffensperger’s office recorded the call to Trump on Saturday, according to a source who was on the call and had direct knowledge of the conversation. Raffensperger told his aides that he did not want the recording or transcript of the call to be released unless Trump attacked or misrepresented the call, according to the source. Trump tweeted attacking Raffensperger on Sunday morning.
The audio recording was reported by the Post several hours after Trump said on Twitter that he had spoken to Raffensperger on the phone in an attempt to convince him to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the November vote. According to Trump, Raffensperger refused to do so. In response, Raffensperger cryptically delivered a strong message to the president on Sunday.
Raffensperger, a Republican and Trump supporter, has consistently rejected Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud in Georgia. He oversaw three different recounts of the vote and conducted several other reviews of the process. He recently commissioned the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct an audit of the Cobb County signature matching system, which determined the system to be 99.9% accurate and revealed no evidence of fraud.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Cleta Mitchell and other Republican allies of the president were also present.
The call represents Trump’s latest extraordinary effort to change the results of the race he lost after weeks of legal and political efforts by the president, his legal team and Republican allies to overturn the free and fair election.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer took advantage of the call in a tweet on Sunday afternoon, suggesting to Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas that he and his Republican allies should investigate the president for his actions.
Cruz was among the 11 Republican senators who announced on Saturday that they would support an objection to Electoral College votes, if any, and propose an election commission to conduct an “emergency 10-day audit” of election results in “disputed states” – despite no credible evidence to suggest widespread electoral fraud in the 2020 elections.
This story has been updated with further developments.
CNN’s Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.